Montreal Transplant?

I moved to Montreal from Europe two years ago to follow my boyfriend. I did not fall in love with Montreal, but I like living here. It's a lively city with plenty of opportunities and events going on all the time. You can probably find all the nationalities of the world living here with all their languages and cultures. I love the bilingual aspect. What I hate are Montreal summers, a reason why I don't want to stay here. Other than that, I had no difficulties adjusting, as I'm used to moving around.

I was actually born in Montreal, but I grew up in Rome, so my dream was to come back one day... and when I did it, well, I decided to stay.
What do I like about Montreal? Many things. First of all, its multicultural aspect. I love the fact that I can meet and talk to people with incredibly different backgrounds without actually needing to travel. Second, the fact that I can eat food from at least 23 different countries in the world, and I can find almost any product I want at both Jean Talon and Atwater markets. Third, people are generally very polite. Fourth, compared to other cities, Montreal is pretty safe.
Fifth, here you can do so many things at the same time, i.e., you can study, work, go to the gym at night, and eat smoked meat 24 hours a day!
Finally, it is a nice city, with a unique feature: it is located in north America, but it reminds us of Paris, especially from spring to fall. Just go walk down St. Denis Street and you will see what I mean. Enjoy it!

I love Montreal. I wasn’t born here but have lived here almost all of my life. Montreal is like a good friend. She is safe, full of interest and complexity, and you miss her when you’re not here. We lived in Phoenix for four years but decided that we were Montrealers at heart. Quebecers in general are in love with life in a way that I have not seen elsewhere.
There is always a tension in the air, for good or bad. To be a Montrealer, you have to open to political confusion, corruption and tension. At the end of the day, however, we are a peaceful city. We complain about a lot of things but we don’t resort to violence. We accept different lifestyles and cultures but are proud of our own. The city streets are filed with good-natured festivals and festival-goers from around the world. It is so easy to find free cultural events in the city. We love to sing, dance, eat and debate.
It would be very difficult for me to leave Montreal again.

I am originally from small town Northern Saskatchewan. Four years ago, I moved to Montreal to embrace diversity and culture of a more multifaceted society. I wanted to learn French too, though that never happened--yet! I love the city for the acceptance and life that is engrained on the Island. Montreal is probably my favourite place in the world, it helps that it is so beautiful. I love Montreal thriving LGBTQA community. Montreal never sleeps, as there is always something fun to do in the city. I loved Montreal so much I convinced my sister to come and go to school here too, and she seems to love it too. The most difficult thing that I had to adjust to was the amount of people everywhere. I come from a small town of 5000 people. That was the biggest challenge. I guess a secondary challenge was the language, though you can get by very easily Downtown, NDG, Westmount, and basically any more western part of the Island. If I could pick up French I would never leave.

Hey guys just came up on this: http://www.montrealmirror.com/2005/090105/survivalguide2005.html

I know its from 2005, but most of these places are still around. Hope it helps!

I moved to Montreal in 2008 for University. I grew up in Sherwood Park, Alberta which is just outside of the capital city Edmonton, and has the world record for being the world’s largest hamlet (although we all think of it a city). My father was a Park Warden for Parks Canada and as a result I have lived in many different places across Western Canada: Riding Mountain, Manitoba; Fort Chipewyan, Alberta; Prince Albert National Park, Saskatchewan; and then in Sherwood Park. Needless to say, I am very comfortable in the prairies and in the wilderness. Montreal is a very hard city for me to get used to. I miss all of the natural aspects that are missing in Montreal: the stars, fresh air, and the northern lights (okay, there’s a chance that they wouldn’t be here at this latitude anyway.) I also find the city to be very crowded and after all these years I’m still not used to running into other people the moment I leave my home. I really like the history of Montreal though. I have never been to Europe, so some of the building here are the closest I’ve come to seeing castles. The history is great in Edmonton as well, it’s just different; it’s more about pioneering and the fur trade. I love going to school here, it’s a great city to be a student in.

If you are a transplant, explain why you moved to Montreal, what you like about the city, and what was the most difficult experience you had while making the adjustment?

I moved to Montreal four years ago from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. I moved here to pursue a degree in creative writing at Concordia University.
Montreal is a great place to live if you are interested in the arts. No matter what your artistic discipline, there is a place for you in this city. I like living in Montreal because it has allowed me to meet creative-minded people that think and dream big. There is inspiration everywhere in this city, particularly in the diversity of people here. I feel free to express myself here.
Montreal is a great place to be a student. The city is practically geared towards student life in that there is always something going on.
Coming from a small city made it hard for me to adapt to 'big city life.' The noise, the air pollution, and the lack of natural environment are things that I could do without. I miss the big skies of Saskatchewan, the stars, the northern lights, and the small community feel.
However, professionally, I feel Montreal has opened a lot of doors for me. I don't see myself staying here prior to graduation, but I can't think of a better place to be doing my undergrad at.

I moved to Montreal over two years ago from St. John's, Newfoundland to attend Concordia University. I was born in Quebec and the government has an amazing student programs with less expensive tuition and financial aid support. The hardest part of moving for me was just adjusting to big city life. I moved from a town of 250,000 people to a city of almost 2 million. I'm still awestruck by the size of the buildings, by rush hour and the sheer volume of people, but this is also my favorite part of Montreal, I never get bored because there's so much to see!

I arrived in Montreal two years ago. I lived in Quebec City before, but also in Calgary and Toronto, since I was a flight attendant for 10 years. I love Montreal, it's not too big, but just enough. There are people from everywhere, and we can feel related to the planet while feeling at home. I wanted my 9 year old son to have an opening to the world while retaining its French culture, and I also wanted him to understand the importance of cultural diversity. Montreal responded very well to these criteria. In addition, the city is very safe, and you can find almost anything you want. Montreal is a mini New York! Except I could not have the same quality of life in New York and Montreal. Here we can live well even if we are not very rich, which is impossible in New York! So, while waiting to get rich and moving to New York, I chose Montreal!

I moved to Montreal with my husband one year ago in search of something different. And different it is! Although I'm quite flexible and usually have no problem adjusting to a new place right away, I must admit Montreal gave me a bit of a headache. Probably because it's so different from Europe. I probably had the hardest time during my first week here, when I had to buy everything for my apartment, from spoons and forks to furniture. I just couldn't understand why household appliances are all so huge here, so I kept looking for European style ones (in the end I found the kind of vacuum cleaner I was looking for, but I also paid through the nose).

In the meantime I got used to huge appliances and to how things work around here. All my initial little shocks aside, I think Montreal is a great place. This is my home now and what I like most about it is that it's both French and English. This is really something special, in my opinion. What keeps bothering me, though, is that I'm still not allowed to have a washing machine in my apartment.

I am from Senegal and I grew up in Detroit, Michigan. From time to time during my childhood, I have traveled but either for vacation purposes or along with my family on my father's business trips. But back in July 2008 I have purposely moved to Montreal to attend University. I instantly fell in love with the sun, the trees, the diversity,the public transportation, how easy it was to get from one place to another, how clean downtown Montreal was compared to many other cities, and how polite and open-minded Montrealers were compared to what I have seen. I also fell in love with Old port of Montreal, the french speaking population, and the different faces and cultures around. Everything was beautiful. I loved how the leaves got on the ground in the fall with their different colors, some of them being green, some yellow and red. "What else could I ask for?" I would often ask, as new as I was in the eyes of this "remarquable" city. But only to find out later that "dear Montreal winter" was close...so we jumped to November, December, January, and February. Those first cold days welcomed me in such a way that I litterly convainced myself everytime I went outside to welcome myself back to a warmer place. I saw "get familiriaze with this" in people eyes and of course later, I didn't give myself a choice, I got used to it. It became my most difficult experience before everything became as beautiful again. Difficult adjustment for me= The cold cold winter.

I moved to Quebec when I was eight years old. We came here because my dad got transferred for work. We moved to a little town called La Plaine, we were probably the first and only Anglophones that lived there. It was very difficult for us, my mom and I didn’t speak French, I knew a few words but that’s it. My dad was born in Sudbury, Ontario; everyone there is bilingual so he didn’t have a problem speaking French. The worst part is that I had to go to a French school because my father went to French school and my mother was born in Germany so her first language wasn’t English either. It was hard at first but now I’m glad, I speak French and English fluently. I really like Montreal because there are so many different cultures, most of the people you will meet have a different background and I find that very fascinating.

I moved here (Montreal) two and a half years ago from Mexico City. The decision was made for two reasons: The first one was to upgrade the quality of our daily life (pollution, crime, and traffic jams kill), and the second was because having universities like Concordia, McGill, and the UQAM in a single city opened the gates to accessible education at any level.

I like the variety of cultures that can be found within the island, how they interact with each other, and how they sometimes avoid each other with no harm and no problems. The fact that I can walk for twenty minutes on a street having people speaking to me in four languages is definitely fun. The most difficult part after I moved here though, was speaking French. I studied the language for about two years before coming here, but it never crossed my mind that I was going to move to a place where people spoke a French variant. I pretty much had to make a lot of rewiring when I came here.